My thoughts and experiences about software development

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About

I love the challenges of Software Engineering: the constraints, the possibilities, the creativity, the people, the conflicts and the joy.

My career started as a tester, part-time while studying towards a Master of Science in Information Technology, because my classmates all said that they never wanted to work as a tester. They all thought it was boring which made it interesting to me. Could something so important really be that boring?

At my first testing job in 2006, I sat in a room by myself, without windows, and reported bugs into a tracker where they were never heard of again. The programmers sat in a room down the hall and we rarely spoke. And I thought that yes, this was boring.

I came back to the same company the next summer. They lured me back by telling me about how they had switched to something called “Scrum” which meant that I would sit in the same room as them and that we would work on the same features together. I did test automation and found bugs which never even made it into production. It was an awakening.

Since then I’ve only worked as a tester in agile teams. I believe that quality is team responsibility which has to be nurtured and not built in hindsight. The applications I’ve worked on have varied: poker client, manager for electronic keys, travelling agency website, tv-streaming, etc…

I’ve consulted and been an employee and I’ve enjoyed both. Besides that, I’ve also taught a course in Agile Testing and done workshops and seminars.

In 2015, I took a bit of a leap and became Practice Lead for Agile and Lean at Magine TV. That means that besides coaching a team, I’ve been leading the agile coaches.

I like to describe myself as “speaking programmer” since I’ve programmed a bit myself and I like to stay up to date with techniques and practices.